Attractiveness of black Shannon trap for phlebotomines

A white Shannon-type trap was used for captures of female sand flies in the search for natural infection with flagellates, however, due to its low pro ductivity and as a large number of phlebotomines settled on the researches black clothes, we decided to compare the relative attractiveness of black a nd white Shannon-type traps sand flies. Several pairs of black and white tr aps were placed side by side in front of caves in four areas in the Serra d a Bodoquena, Bonito county, State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, for a tota l of 12 observations and 44 h of capture. The experiment resulted in 889 ph lebotomines captured, 801 on the black and 88 on the white trap, representi ng 13 species. The hourly Williams; means were 8.67 and 1.24, respectively, and the black/white ratio was 7.0:1.0. Lutzomyia almerior, an anthropophil ic species closely associated with caves, was predominant (89%). Only two o ther species Nyssomyia whitmani and Psathyromyia punctigeniculata, also ant hropophilic, were significantly attracted to the black rather than to the w hite trap (chi (2) test; p less than or equal to 0.01). The difference betw een the diversity index of the two traps was not significant at level 0.05. The black trap in these circumstances was much more productive than the wh ite, especially for anthropophilic species.